Rich Text & Source Code Editors

Everybody who uses the Web must be familiar with Rich Text Editors (RTE) and Source Code Editors. While the former is used by the visitors to edit and format the content/text on a site, the latter is used by programmers to edit the source code of computer programs.

A Rich Text Editor is an interface developed to facilitate users to modify the text presenting itself as “What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get” Editor. While a user makes the changes, it generates the standards compliant HTML code. Thus in a way, These RTEs help increasing the usability of a website.

A source code editor is an application or text editor program that is meant to allow easy editing of source code.

There are several such editors but here we are going to highlight some that offer excellent features and are available for FREE.

1- TinyMCE

Offering a lot of useful features, TinyMCE is an open source rich text editor. Its primary features include easy integration with CMSs, browser friendliness, support for multiple languages, customization abilities, etc. Most importantly, the editor is lightweight and thus takes less time to load.

2- NicEdit

This RTE is extremely simple to use that allows rich text editing on a website. Some of its noticeable features are:

Lightweight RTE

Quick to integrate into any site

Quite simpler in comparison to other Text editors

Is cross platform Inline Content Editor (ICE)

3- CKEditor

An updated version of FCKeditor, it is an excellent WYSIWYG editor that allows users to edit content inside web pages as if they are doing it on Microsoft Word. It is compatible with all major browsers and Operating systems and offers a lot of customization features. The editor is considered best, especially for developers.

4- YUI Editor

Part of the Yahoo User-Interface Library (YUI), this RTE comes with a wide range of useful features such as rich formatting, image sizing, drag and drop inclusion, mobile devices support, etc. It offers an extensible toolbar favoring customization to a large extent.

5- FreeTextBox

It is another useful and popular WYSIWYG HTML editor which is powered by ASP.net. The editor is quite simple to use and has a lot of desirable features.

Source Code Editors

1- Notepad + +

Written in C++ and based on the Scintilla editing component, Notepad + + is an efficient replacement of earlier Notepad. A lot of new features have been added to it including Plugin support, zooming, tabbed editing, drag and drop, etc. It also supports multiple languages.

2- jEdit

Ease of use and feature richness has made this source code editor quite popular. Some of its important features are:

Compatibility with Windows, Unix, Mac OS, Linux sand VMS

Supports syntax highlighting

Offers numerous plugins

Extensible and offers customization

3- Crimson Editor

Regarded as a professional source code editor for Windows, it is much smaller in size compared to other editors and thus loads faster. It has lot of useful features, however, it suffers from the drawback that it supports only English language.

4- Araneae

Yet another efficient editor for Windows, Araneae allows editing the code with its several useful features. The plus side of this free editor is that it comes with a lot of extensions.

5- RJ TextEd

Combining the functionality of a text editor and source editor, this one is excellent for use. It has a long list of features both for text and source code editing and supports several languages.

We hope you liked our collection of Rich text and source code editors. We will be back with more on this and look forward to your inputs on the same.